


come fly with me

by kitseybarbours



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Airplanes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, fluff?? with closure??? who am i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 15:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6759175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux never thought he was the type of man who'd ever find himself with his tongue in a stranger’s mouth on an airplane at two in the morning, but then again, before tonight he never thought he looked like a “jazz man”, either.  <em>Isn’t learning new things exciting?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	come fly with me

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this piece of fanart](http://kawaiilo-ren.tumblr.com/post/143583957330/so-i-am-in-taiwan-for-the-next-8-days-for-a-much) by [kawaiilo-ren](http://kawaiilo-ren.tumblr.com/), and some of [hux-you-up](http://hux-you-up.tumblr.com/)'s [tags](http://hux-you-up.tumblr.com/post/143632356626/kawaiiloren-so-i-am-in-taiwan-for-the-next-8) on said art, namely (spoiler alert) "six hours in and they're kissing frantically in the bathroom" and "by the end of the flight they've joined the mile high club". Thanks to you both for the inspiration. ;)

*

“I think you’re in my seat.”

Brendol Hux stands in the aisle of an Airbus A380 at seven-thirty on a Sunday night, frowning at the occupant of seat 29B. The dark-haired man’s eyes are closed, and loud music is audible through his giant red-and-black headphones. He doesn’t budge. Behind Hux, someone clears their throat loudly.

“Hey.” Hux reaches out to jostle the arm of the dark-haired man, getting impatient. “I said you’re in my seat.”

The dark-haired man jolts awake, his eyes flying open. “What? — oh, shit,” he says hurriedly, taking in the situation. He pushes his headphones down around his neck, where their tinny music blares on. “Fuck. Sorry about that. Let me just —”

Clumsily, he unbuckles his seatbelt and stands up, ducking his head against the low curved airplane ceiling. He extracts himself cautiously from the row of seats: Hux and the increasingly-annoyed other passengers in the aisle behind him all shove over as best they can to let him out, which isn’t easy given the man’s gargantuan stature.

“Thanks,” Hux mutters, and pushes past him to claim ownership of the middle seat. He hopes desperately that no one’s been assigned the window seat; he doesn’t relish the thought of another awkward tango with a too-tall stranger.

“Sorry about that,” Hux’s seatmate apologises again, folding his long body into the aisle seat and buckling the seatbelt, his black-denim-clad legs bent at an uncomfortable angle. “Must’ve read my boarding pass wrong. I get all jittery on flights, can’t even think straight.” He smiles awkwardly, showing off a mouthful of crooked teeth.

“It’s fine,” Hux says. “It happens.” He rummages in his carry-on rucksack for his sketchbook and the pencil-case containing his drawing instruments and pencils, shoving them into the seat pocket and then, for good measure, pulling out _The Pillars of the Earth_ and jamming that in the pocket too. His seatmate watches him with apparent interest.

“Big book,” he comments. “What’s it about?”

“Building a mediaeval cathedral,” Hux replies shortly, buckling his seatbelt with finality. He hopes this won’t be one of _those_ flights, where his neighbour won’t shut up long enough to let him finish a drawing — he has work to do. Surreptitiously he pats the pocket of his sweater and feels the reassuring lump of his phone and his earbuds. He starts trying to pull them out without attracting his seatmate’s attention.

“Is it good?”

Hux shrugs. “All right, I guess. The author’s a little high-and-mighty but the story’s good enough.” He draws his fist out of his pocket, phone and earbuds clasped inside it, and sets these down in his lap.

The dark-haired man nods intently. He looks at the other things Hux has crammed into the suffering seat pocket with the same keen-eyed interest. “You an artist?”

“Architect,” Hux says reluctantly. He sees no easy way out of a continued conversation — carefully, he begins unwinding his tangled headphones, hoping the man will notice and stop talking — but luckily, just as his seatmate opens his mouth to say something else, the PA system gives two soft _bings_ and the pre-flight announcements begin.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Katherine and I’d like to welcome you aboard British Airways flight 284 with service to London this evening…”

As the flight attendant carries on, informing them in a cool English accent that today’s flight will be approximately ten hours and twenty-five minutes long, Hux takes the opportunity to plug in his earbuds and thumb the power button of his phone.

Nothing happens. Hux frowns.

“An architect! That’s cool,” his seatmate is saying, as Katherine reminds them to fasten their seatbelts and ensure their seatbacks and tray-tables are in the upright and locked position. “What brought you to San Francisco?”

Hux presses the power button again. The screen stays black. _Shit._

“Business trip,” he replies, staring dismally down at his phone. He recalls with a sinking feeling having packed his charger in his luggage. _Shit shit shit._

“Flight attendants, prepare for cross-check,” Katherine requests. The engines begin to rumble. Next to Hux, his seatmate grips the armrest with long fingers and swallows hard. His right leg starts bouncing furiously and he glances at it with resignation.

“Business trip,” he replies weakly. “Cool.” The roar of the engines grows louder.

“Mm,” Hux says, pressing the power button over and over to no avail. He grits his teeth in frustration: _Now I’ll_ have _to spend the whole flight talking to him. Unless —_ “Ah, you wouldn’t happen to have a Samsung charger with you, would you?” he asks.

His seatmate shakes his head tightly. His eyes flick nervously to the window. “Nope. Sorry. iPhone.” He swallows hard again, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“We would now like to draw your attention to the safety demonstrations on the TV screens in front of you,” Katherine announces over the PA. The seatback screens begin to play a montage of people fastening their seatbelts, putting on oxygen masks and smilingly assuming the bracing position in the event of a crash landing, all accompanied by some cheery light jazz. Hux’s seatmate eyes the water-landing demonstration with severe apprehension, and his right leg begins to bounce faster.

“Are you…okay?” Hux asks tentatively.

“I’m fine. Yeah. Fine,” the dark-haired man says, although the hitch in his voice and the slightly manic look in his eyes clearly say otherwise. “I just — don’t like flying, is all. Um, actually — would you mind just, um, keeping on talking a bit?”

 _Bing, bing._ “Flight attendants, please prepare for take-off.”

Almost as soon as the flight attendant finishes speaking, the plane begins to taxi: the engines roar still louder and Hux’s seatmate squeezes his eyes tight shut. “Can you, uh. Just, like, distract me a little?”

“Oh,” says Hux. “Ah — sure.” Resigning himself to a _very_ long flight, he sighs softly and shoves his useless phone and earbuds into his rucksack. “Um —” He casts around for something to talk about, and realises that they haven’t even exchanged names. “Well, first things first: I’m Brendol Hux, but, er, just call me Hux. I’m — I’m an architect, like I said,” he begins clumsily.

“Hux,” his seatmate repeats, nodding with his eyes still closed. His fingertips drum out a nervous beat on his thigh. “I’m Ben. Ben Solo. I’m a musician.” The plane streaks down the runway and lifts off, pressing the passengers back into their seats. Ben gives a low anxious hum from deep in his throat.

“Ah — what do you play?” Hux asks.

“Bass,” Ben answers at once, his voice taut. “Electric and string.”

Hux’s stomach gives a not-unpleasant twinge. He’d dated a bassist, once, at uni — he’d had _massive_ hands, long, strong, calloused fingers — not unlike, Hux realises, darting a glance downwards, Ben’s, currently wrapped white-knuckled round the armrest.

He’d done some pretty nice things with those hands.

_Hm._

The plane continues its diagonal ascent. “Bass,” Hux repeats. “Neat. So — are you in a band, or an orchestra, or something?”

Ben nods quickly. “A band. We’ve just signed a recording contract in London; that’s why I’m flying over. Rest of my bandmates have been there for a couple days but I had a couple of things to tie up before I left. Family stuff, y’know. My cousin just moved to San Francisco and I was helping her get settled,” he informs Hux at length, his words coming out in a rapid nervous patter. “She’s seventeen and she, like, ran away from home — well, kind of, but not really, because her dad is a total hippie, and when she graduated last month he told her to follow her dreams or whatever, and apparently Rey’s dreams were to take off cross-country with her two boyfriends and rent a shitty apartment in the Haight. She seems pretty happy so far,” Ben babbles on. “And I guess because I’m ten years older than her and I live in the city I’m, like, qualified to keep an eye on her and stuff? Although I’m going to be in London now so maybe not? But —”

The PA system _bings_ politely again as the plane hits cruising altitude and levels out.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the _fasten seatbelts_ sign…” Katherine tells them pleasantly.

“Is that the worst of it, now that we’ve taken off?” Hux asks Ben.

Ben gives a stilted laugh. “You’d think so, but no. No; now we’re just _suspended here,_ thousands of miles above the earth, for the next ten-and-a-half hours…and then assuming nothing goes wrong during _that_ time, there’s still the landing. Did you know that most fatal airplane accidents happen during take-off and arrival?” Ben asks him, a little frantically. “Because they do.”

“Oh. Uh — good to know,” Hux replies, frowning. “Thanks.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t talk like that. I’m sure everything will be fine. Probably. So, uh, why’re you going to London?” Ben stutters out. Hux blinks. “Do you live there? I’m guessing probably yeah, because of your accent and stuff —”

“Yes, I do,” Hux interrupts him. “Maida Vale. Near the BBC studios,” he adds, pointless seeing as how Ben is American, but Ben nods with interest all the same.

“Cool. Cool. I don’t really know where that is but it sounds cool,” Ben says earnestly. His leg is still jittering and there’s that same frenetic intensity in his voice and his eyes, but he’s released his death grip on the armrest, at least. “I’ve never been to London. Do you like it?”

“I love it,” Hux says, and surprises himself with the candid passion in his voice. He smiles, a little embarrassed without knowing why. “Yeah. I really love it.”

Ben smiles, too, showing those crooked teeth again. He has, Hux is only just noticing, a rather madly gorgeous mouth, and the messy smile somehow only makes it lovelier. Hux feels the tips of his ears grow warm.

“How long have you lived there?” Ben asks, and Hux is glad of the question because it gives him something to focus on other than the absolute _lushness_ of Ben’s bottom lip.

“Ah — sixteen years, now, I guess? Yeah — my dad was in the army and he got transferred there when I was thirteen,” Hux tells him. “He died the next year, actually, but Mum and I stayed in London. Haven’t left since.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben tells him, dark eyebrows creasing over darker eyes. “About your dad.”

“Don’t be,” Hux assures him. “He was a right cruel old bastard, trust me; we’ve been better off without him.”

“Oh,” Ben says. “I see.”

 “Yep.”

Their brief awkward silence is interrupted by the arrival of a flight attendant with the drinks cart. “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks Ben sweetly. “Coffee, tea, juice, wine, spirits?”

“Have you got whiskey?” Ben asks immediately. “Like, the little tiny bottles?”

“Yes, sir.” She produces a miniature bottle of Jack Daniel’s and hands it to him.

“Awesome, thank you,” Ben says, and then in one fluid motion unscrews the cap and downs the whole thing. Hux and the flight attendant look on, stupefied. Ben surfaces and wipes his mouth: “What?” he asks in response to their bewildered stares. “It calms me down.”

“Ah — anything for you, sir?” the flight attendant hurriedly asks of Hux.

“Er — just a coffee, please. Black, no sugar,” he responds distractedly. He takes the cup from her, and Ben hands back his empty whiskey bottle with a smile and another _thank you._ The flight attendant wishes them both a pleasant flight and continues quickly down the aisle.

Hux takes a sip of his coffee and grimaces; it’s too bitter even for his tastes. But he forces himself to keep drinking it: he can’t afford to sleep the whole flight away; he’s got several drafts to finish, _and besides, I might have to keep Ben entertained._

“So are you…feeling any better?” Hux asks.

“Not really,” Ben says frankly. He shrugs. “Whatever. I think I’ll sleep for a bit,” he announces abruptly. “Least that way I don’t have to _think_ about the plane crashing ‘n shit, you know?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Hux replies uncertainly. Ben gives him a thumbs-up.

He pulls his iPhone from the front pocket of his hoodie and unlocks it, scrolling through his music. Hux watches with a twinge of envy: if he’s going to settle in and work for the next few hours, he’d much have preferred to do it with the soothing sounds of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth in the background, as he’d planned to. Ben pulls an elastic from his wrist, sweeps his hair into a bun and tugs his enormous headphones on over his (equally enormous, Hux notes) ears, and then settles in, closing his eyes.

“See you on the flip side, Hux,” he says, flashing a peace sign.

“Sleep well, Ben.”

He’s out in minutes. Carefully — although he knows from experience that Ben can’t hear a thing with those headphones on — Hux extracts his sketchbook and drawing tools from the bursting seat pocket and opens to the blueprint he’s been working on. It’s nothing big, just a redesign for the façade of an apartment complex, but it’s in a quiet, pleasant area and Hux is enjoying putting a particular level of care into ensuring that the building — a refurbished Victorian — loses none of its charm and keeps the kindly feel of its surroundings.

His preference for hand-drawing his drafts is unusual these days; everything is digital, now, and although he has his tablet in his bag and there’s some truly excellent architectural drawing software on his laptop, Hux still prefers to sketch his designs first by hand and then, once they’re perfected, transfer them to digital. He finds it helps him connect better with whatever he’s working on: makes it tangible, alive. Even without his music, he’s soon enough immersed in the work, bending intently over his page and protractor and drawing careful neat lines with a perfectly sharpened pencil —

Something heavy lands on his shoulder and jostles his arm, making his pencil line go skating up across the page, right through the whole drawing. Hux looks up indignantly and finds to his mild horror that Ben’s head has drooped over and come to rest on his shoulder.

(He finds, also, that Ben’s hair where it tickles his cheek is ridiculously, perfectly, run-your-fingers-through-it soft; but he ignores this for now in favour of more pressing matters).

Ben is snoring lightly, his broad chest rising and falling peacefully. His pretty mouth is ever-so-slightly open: Hux is momentarily transfixed by this before he snaps to, envisioning drool on the shoulder of his favourite cardigan. _Okay. So. Let’s…do something about this, shall we?_

With determination Hux lays down his pencil (the tip, of course, is now broken). “Ben.” Hux says his name firmly. Ben doesn’t move. “ _Ben.”_

No response. Hux sighs. Awkwardly, he reaches up a hand and shoves Ben’s shoulder. “Ben, wake up.”

Ben’s big dark eyes flutter open. “What —? oh, fuck, dude, did I fall asleep on you?” he says, flustered. “Shit. Sorry, man.” He removes his head promptly from Hux’s shoulder and sits up straight. “Won’t happen again.” He grins.

“Thank you,” Hux says stiffly. As subtly as he can, he goes about erasing the traitorous line marring his sketch, hoping Ben won’t notice it and make the connection — but _(par for the course today)_ he does.

“ _Shit!_ Did I do that to your drawing, too?” Ben asks with genuine concern. “Fuck, man, I’m really sorry! Is that gonna be hard to fix?”

“No,” Hux says, “it’ll be fine.” He continues carefully erasing, growing annoyed as more and more small details have to be taken out along with the mistake. He wishes that for once he’d just used the fucking software.

Eventually the line is all gone, but along with it went half a pediment, most of one of the gables, and the detailing on the edge of the roof. Ben has been watching him erase with a furrowed brow, seeming genuinely sorry — “Will you be able to re-draw all of that?” he asks, when Hux sighs and dusts off the last of the eraser shavings.

“Well, yes, but not right now,” Hux says, a little curtly. Ben looks abashed, and Hux bites his lip. “Er. Well. For now I think I’ll just — read,” he says, although he actually has no interest in Tom Builder or the Lady Aliena right now. He packs up his pencils, instruments and sketchbook and puts them all back in the seat pocket, and then hovers over _Pillars_ for a second before picking it up and opening to his bookmark.

“Sounds good, man,” Ben nods. “I think I’m gonna work for a bit, too; you’ve inspired me.” A flash of that grin, and then he’s unbuckling his seatbelt, unfolding his gangling limbs and standing unsteadily to his full height in order to open up the overhead compartment. He pulls out a massive, lumpy, battered black duffel bag that looks like it’s been through a war or three, and rummages blindly through it before emerging triumphant with a small Moleskine notebook in pristine condition. He digs around for a moment more and comes out with exactly one pencil. “Nice,” Ben says, apparently to himself.

Hux realises that he’s read the same paragraph on page 202 about three times now. Ben plops back into his seat and re-buckles his seatbelt. Hux turns his page without having absorbed any of it, and then waits a few minutes — until Ben has folded down his tray-table and begun to make markings in the little notebook, humming a melody under his breath — before he asks, “What kind of work?”

Ben looks up. “Song-writing!” he replies. “For the band.”

“The band,” Hux says. “Of course. Er — what _is_ your band? Anyone I’d know?”

Ben pauses. He narrows his eyes at Hux, seeming to size him up for a moment, and then he shakes his head. “We’re pretty underground; you’ve probably never heard of us. We’re called the Knights of Ren.”

“Never heard of you,” Hux concurs. “Sorry. What kind of music do you play?”

“It’s kind of an industrial post-punk noise project thing?” Ben explains eagerly. “See, there’s like a whole _bunch_ of us, right, and we kinda change our sound all the time, based on who’s around and who’s playing what lately, and this one time one of our vocalists had nodes but he sang for us anyway and it was just so fucking _raw,_ y’know? It was fuckin’ great, let me tell you —” He stops. Hux has been trying to follow, nodding weakly, but he’s lost and Ben realises it now. He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. I can tell it’s not really, uh, your thing.”

“Mm. No. Can’t say that it is,” Hux agrees. 

“You look like a jazz man,” Ben says, doing the squinty-eyed-sizing-up thing again. “Or — wait. No! No, I’ve got it: Russian classical music. Yes. Yes. The Romantics. Am I wrong?”

Hux, raised on Rachmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov, is taken thoroughly aback. He blinks three times in rapid succession. “Ah. No. No, you’re not.” He frowns, wondering what, exactly, gives him the impression of being…a jazz man. _Or a Russian-romantics man, for that matter._

Ben pumps his fist. “Nice! Damn, I am _so good,”_ he congratulates himself. “Hm. What else. Lemme guess — opera. Big, dramatic, depressing opera. The kind that sounds like you're in a castle when you hear it. Wagner ‘n shit. Am I wrong?”

“Jesus,” Hux says. He must look unnerved: Ben laughs.

“Am I wrong?” he prompts him. Hux shakes his head, eyeing him warily, and Ben laughs again. “Don’t look so freaked-out, dude. I’m not a stalker; it’s just you literally have a Wagner quote on the cover of your sketchbook.” He points.

Hux looks at the offending sketchbook as if seeing it for the first time, and there it is, inked in his own neat, precise handwriting: _Imagination creates reality._ “Oh. Right. So I do.”

“Man, you should’ve seen your face,” Ben teases. “You look cute when you’re terrified.” He winks.

Hux feels the blush spreading from his ears to colour his whole face. He hopes the fluorescent airplane lighting is washing him out enough to disguise the heightened colour in his cheeks.

“Thanks. I think.” Hux clears his throat self-consciously. Ben grins.

 _Okay. So, uh._ _That was…something._

“I, er — I interrupted your work,” Hux remembers. “You were song-writing.” He gestures to the little book, still open on Ben’s tray-table.

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. “I was.”

“Do you have to…get back to that?”

“Probably,” Ben says amiably. “You gonna get back to your book?”

“Probably.”

“Cool.”

Ben puts on his headphones, picks up his pencil and bends over his Moleskine again. For some reason, Hux hadn’t expected him to actually keep working; it’s with a vague sense of bewilderment that he opens his book again and discreetly turns back one page, picking up where he’d left off.

_There were dozens of churches. They were all shapes and sizes, some of wood and others of stone…_

For a while Hux reads with one ear cocked in Ben’s direction, expecting at any moment some interruption, some joke or nervous announcement or maybe his head on his shoulder again, _that’d be all right —_ but there’s nothing. He sneaks a glance at Ben and finds him peering intently at the notebook (Hux sees now that the pages are blank scores), his nose about two inches from the paper. He’s humming again: Hux can hear it, just barely, over the tinny pulse of music from his headphones. It sounds nice.

*

Eventually Hux gets absorbed by his book in the same way Ben’s been absorbed by his work. He doesn’t know how much time passes, but suddenly his book-induced trance is being broken by the arrival of another flight attendant, this time with the meal service. Hux looks up, disoriented: it’s fully dark outside and he is definitely _not_ in twelfth-century England. He glances at his wrist, which is bare, and remembers that for whatever reason he’d packed his watch as well as his charger in his checked bag. He sighs.

“Thank you.” Ben takes his packaged airplane dinner from the flight attendant and begins peeling off the plastic. There’s another miniature of Jack on his tray-table and his headphones are back around his neck.

“Beef or pasta, sir?” the flight attendant asks Hux.

“Beef, please, and a glass of water. Thanks.” He receives both; the attendant carries on.

They both go about eating their rubbery, sauce-drowned suppers: Hux saws away with his plastic knife and fork for an uncomfortably long while before he succeeds in cutting off a bite. “How’s the book?” Ben asks him, as he chews it, wincing, and swallows.

“’S alright,” Hux answers. “Getting interesting. How’s the work?”

Ben shrugs. “Can’t complain. I’m working on a pretty cool song right now, got some nice motifs going on.” He unscrews the lid of his whiskey and offers it to Hux. “Want some?”

Hux eyes it, surprised, for a moment, and then nods. He’s not usually one for whiskey — he likes his wines, Hux does —  _but what the hell._ “Sure. Thanks.” He takes a swig and only winces a little as it goes down.

Ben watches him with a trace of amusement in his eyes. Hux hands the bottle back to him and Ben drains it. Hux blushes.

“Do you have the time?” he asks, sawing off another chunk of beef and chasing it with lukewarm mashed potatoes.

Ben checks his phone. “12:37,” he says, sounding disappointed, as if he’d hoped for something else.

Hux is surprised: he’d read for more than an hour. “Eight more hours to go,” he observes. Ben winces. “Oh — right, sorry, you probably didn’t want to be reminded of that.”

Ben gives a brave smile. “Not really. But whatever.” He scoops up the last of his meat, potatoes, and limp mixed veg in one towering forkful and pops it all in his mouth. Hux raises his eyebrows.

“Impressive.”

Ben swallows. “I try.”

Hux smiles to himself. He folds the plastic covering back over his tray, deciding that the rest of the beef is inedible, and picks instead at the packaged sponge cake they’ve provided for pudding; Ben mirrors him, polishing off the whole dry, faintly vanilla-flavoured square in about a bite and a half.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Hux comments. Ben gives a tiny mock bow and they exchange a smile. A flight attendant makes the rounds with a rubbish bag; Hux folds up his tray-table, finds his travel toiletry kit in his rucksack and unbuckles his seatbelt. “Mind if I sneak out?” he asks Ben.

“Sure.” Instead of standing up and letting Hux go past him, Ben tucks his long legs as far up to his chest as he’s able (so, not very far), leaving Hux to squeeze by, deciding at the last second to face outwards so as not to shove his crotch in Ben’s face. (As it is, Hux imagines Ben’s getting quite the view of his arse, and is hard-pressed to decide if he minds).

(Well. He’s not actually _that_ hard-pressed. Not very much at all).

“Thanks.” Hux makes his way up the aisle to the bathroom, toiletry kit in hand. He squints in the harsh light, listening to the dull roar of the engines and feeling the moisture seeping out of his skin. He pisses, washes his hands with the almond-scented soap that’s in the bathroom of every plane he’s ever been on, and then brushes his teeth: he’s hoping to sleep, now, deciding it’s late enough that he won’t mess up his sleeping schedule.

When Hux gets back Ben stands up to let him through. In his absence, blankets and pillows have been distributed; “I grabbed you one,” Ben says, gesturing to them on the seat. Around them, reading lights are blinking out as the passengers settle in for the night.

Hux fastens his seatbelt. He takes his blanket out of its plastic packaging, arranges it over his lap and stuffs the pillow behind his neck, trying and failing to get comfortable. “Off to bed?” Ben asks.

“In a manner of speaking.”

Ben smiles. “Night, Hux.”

“Night.” Hux closes his eyes. Beside him, he hears Ben rummaging around: he deduces that his headphones are back on when he hears, faintly, his music start up again. His reading light is still on — it’s distracting, but Hux doesn’t want to ask him to turn it off if he’s still working. _He’ll go to sleep at some point. Probably._

He sighs to himself and settles in to sleep, half-hoping and half-fearing that he’ll wake up on Ben’s shoulder.

*

Hux dreams of waves, of being on a ship tossed about in a storm. When he’s pulled back to consciousness by a frantic hiss of his name, he understands why.

“Hux,” Ben is whispering, as the plane dips and lurches to one side. “Hux, wake up, c’mon.”

“Ben.” Hux blinks, Ben’s heavy-featured face coming into focus in the dark. “What is it?”

Another set of _bings_ from the PA system, coupled with another nauseating swerve, save Ben from explaining.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some fairly severe turbulence…” Katherine, still awake and still well-mannered, explains in his stead. “Please stay in your seats with your seatbelts fastened.”

“She didn’t say when it’d be over,” Ben whispers ominously. “They always tell you when it’s gonna be over. But she didn’t. Oh, _shit.”_

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Hux mumbles. Bleary-eyed, he looks around: all the other passengers appear to be sleeping soundly. Not a single reading light remains lit. Hux wonders if they’ve been mistakenly placed on a flight specifically intended for professional sleepers with very strong stomachs.

“How do you know?” Ben asks him, a paranoid edge to his tone. “This could all be part of their plan. I bet it’s not even, like, a storm, or like, trade winds or whatever. I bet it’s _deliberate sabotage.”_

“I suppose 9/11 was also an inside job,” Hux retorts drily.

“Oh, _dude,_ don’t even get me _started,”_ Ben says in an emphatic whisper, before catching Hux’s raised eyebrows. “Oh. You were joking. Well _I’m not.”_

Another violent dip of the plane prevents Hux from replying. Ben’s eyes widen and he grabs for both armrests this time, his long fingers clenching tight. He swears under his breath: “Oh, _fuck.”_

Hux is awake now, and fully aware that there’s no point trying a) to sleep or b) to work while the skies are so choppy and Ben is all hyped-up like this. He’s disappointed only for a moment, and then he gets to thinking.

“Do you need me to distract you again?” he hisses, over Ben’s repeating, mantra-like, of “Oh _fuck_ oh _fuck_ oh _fuck.”_

“Yeah,” Ben hisses back, sounding relieved but looking a bit grey. “That’d be cool. Do you wanna, just, like, talk again, or, uh —”

“Or we could make out?”

Ben blinks. Twice. There’s a pause. Hux begins to regret every decision he’s ever made in his life leading up to this moment. _He’s probably not even into guys, holy fuck, I should probably have_ asked _or something —_

“ _Dude._ Yeah. Let’s do that.”

Hux kisses him.

Ben kisses him back with enthusiasm. His mouth, Hux is pleased to report, feels just as luscious as it looks.

(Hux never thought he was the type of man who’d ever find himself with his tongue in a stranger’s mouth on an airplane at two in the morning, but then again, before tonight he never thought he looked like a “jazz man”, either.  _Isn’t learning new things exciting?)_

Ben unbuckles his seatbelt one-handed without breaking the kiss, shifting to pull Hux closer. Hux responds eagerly, unbuckling his seatbelt too _(turbulence be damned)_ and reaching up to tug Ben’s hair out of its loose bun and work his fingers through it. Ben groans low against Hux’s mouth — “ _Shit,_ man” — and then he does something _very nice_ with his teeth and Hux’s bottom lip that Hux would _really_ _not mind at all_ if he repeated. He tries to convey this sentiment via a rough “Oh, _fuck,_ Ben,” in between frantic, messy kisses, and apparently Ben gets the message, because he does. Twice.

 _I have ascended, and not just literally, to a higher plane,_ Hux thinks, dizzy.He wonders if the altitude is contributing at all to his light-headedness, and then he realises that the cabin is pressurised and that yes, Ben really _is_ just that good of a kisser. _Incredible, honestly_ _…_

He pulls back.

Ben’s face in the dark, illuminated only by the dim glow of clouded moonlight from outside, is a work of art — the shadows falling on his long nose; his eyes wide, and those _lips,_ full and bitten. Hux has to concentrate very hard on forming a coherent sentence when he whispers, “I’m gonna go to the loo.”

Ben’s absurdly expressive features flash through confusion, realisation, disappointment. Frowning, uncertain, he wordlessly lets Hux squeeze past him to the aisle, and looks up at him in hesitation —  _really?_

Hux clears his throat.

“You’re welcome to join me.”

A grin spreads slowly over Ben’s face. Hux smirks. He turns and takes two steps down the aisle to the lavatory, and seconds later, hears Ben scrambling to stand up and follow.

*

“So does that, like, count?” Ben asks, sometime later.

Hux, breathing hard, asks, “Count for what?”

“Joining the mile-high club. Are we in?”

Hux guffaws. He wipes his mouth and kisses Ben hard. “Yeah. Yeah, I think we’re in.”

*

They sneak back to their seats in the dark, snickering like teenagers and casting guilty glances at the dozing flight attendants at the other end of the cabin. Once there, Ben pulls up the armrest between their seats and pats his shoulder invitingly. “It’s your turn to fall asleep on me. I owe you one.”

Hux grins. He goes past Ben to his seat (not caring which way he’s facing this time) and settles in, picking up his blanket and pillow from the floor, where they fell whilst their owner was otherwise occupied. He scooches closer to Ben and re-tucks himself in with the blanket, forgoing the pillow in favour of resting his head on Ben’s chest, nestled in between clavicle and shoulder.

“You’re so _warm,”_ Hux says with drowsy satisfaction. “I’m going to bring you on every flight I take from now on. I don’t know why they insist on keeping airplanes roughly the same temperature as meat lockers,” he complains. “It’s inhumane.”

Ben opens his mouth, his tone half-joking: “Well in a sense, _aren’t_ they just flying meat —”

 Hux lifts a finger. “Don’t start.”

Ben smiles down at him, reaching lazily up to ruffle Hux’s hair. “Sleep well.”

“I will.”

*

Hux wakes up to sunlight streaming in through the blind: they’d forgotten to close it during the night. His head is still pillowed on Ben’s chest, and from the slowness of his breathing and the gentle sound of his snores Hux can tell that he, at least, is still fast asleep, undisturbed by the early-June sunshine. Hux sits up carefully, wincing at his stiff neck, and casts a fond glance at Ben’s sleeping face: his lovely mouth slack, his big dark eyes closed tranquilly.

Ben’s iPhone rests atop the duffel bag at his feet, and Hux reaches for it, thumbing the home button. The screen is badly cracked, and the background is a selfie — Ben and a pretty, freckled brunette much younger than him, wearing a Vampire Weekend T-shirt with her hair in three buns. The two are standing in front of a door with a rusting number 37 on it, pulling crazy faces; Hux guesses this is Ben and his cousin Rey on moving day. He smiles.

The time on the phone screen reads 1:24 a.m., San Francisco time. Hux does the math and determines that it’s 9:24 in London. He has to pee but decides it can wait, not wanting to wake Ben yet. He eyes his sketchbook in the seat pocket and thinks of the work he’d planned to do during the flight — he has absolutely no regrets about his chosen alternative activities, but recognises that he should probably put his nose to the grindstone now to make up for it. He pulls out his book and pencils and gets to work.

Ben wakes up an hour later, as the flight attendants are just finishing their breakfast rounds. Katherine informs them that they’ll be touching down in approximately three hours, just after one-thirty London time; Ben yawns and stretches and murmurs “Morning.”

Hux looks up. “Hi.” He puts down his pencil and reaches up to press a kiss to Ben’s lips — he looks, frankly, adorable, hair mussed and eyes bleary from sleep, and Hux can’t help himself. “Sleep okay?”

“Very well,” Ben returns, a half-smile playing on his lips. _“Very_ well.”

“Good,” Hux says lightly, smiling too. “Can I offer you a slice of cold, vaguely banana-flavoured bread?” he asks in an uppity accent. He gestures with a flourish to the individually-wrapped pieces of banana loaf they’ve been provided for breakfast, two of which he’d snagged while Ben was still asleep. “Or perhaps some disgustingly weak tea — prepared just the way you Americans like, I believe,” he adds with disdain.

“Sounds delightful,” Ben replies in the same hoity-toity tone. He unwraps the banana bread and chases it with the now stone-cold tea, smacking his lips when he finishes. “Jolly good. God save the Queen,” he adds for good measure.

Hux smirks. “You’ll fit right in.”

*

The landing, a couple hours later, is painless by Hux’s standards but apparently still an ordeal for Ben. This time, though, instead of the armrest, Ben grips tight to Hux’s hand.

They file out of the plane along with the other passengers, blinking in the surprising sunlight as they cross the tarmac. Inside the airport, they follow the familiar, friendly purple-and-white signage to the baggage carousels, walking side-by-side in companionable silence. When Ben is about to make a wrong turn, Hux catches his wrist and gently tugs him in the right direction. Ben smiles. Hux smiles back.

The wait for their bags is, as usual, abominably long.  Hux, by some miracle, gets his one case fairly quickly, but Ben has several bags, being as how he’s moving here for at least a month or two. As Hux pulls his black Heys off the carousel, he senses Ben’s hesitation behind him —  _is this it? —_ and says simply “I’ll wait.” Ben grins.

Hux yawns, looking around and tapping his foot; he’s eager to get back to his flat. His friend Caroline has been watering the plants and checking in on Millie, his cat, but he’s still anxious to be back and make sure his aloe vera hasn’t died. Casting a glance at Ben — standing beside him with his hands jammed in the back pockets of his jeans, surrounded by duffels and boxes and looking dishevelled and handsome — Hux silently thanks his past self for having changed the sheets before he left. _You know. Just in case._

Ben catches Hux staring and smiles knowingly at him. Hux grins back.

“So, uh. Can I ask you for your number?” Ben asks, suddenly shy, as if they haven’t already seen each other half-naked in a tiny airplane bathroom in the middle of the night.

“Well,” Hux says, remembering the situation as he reaches into his pocket, “you _can,_ but my phone’s still dead. And I just got a new number and I don’t have it memorised yet.”

“Well that’s certainly an issue,” Ben replies gallantly.

“My charger,” Hux continues, holding up a finger, “is in my suitcase.” He taps the side of it for good measure.

Ben catches on. “So I recall.”

“Once I leave the airport, I’ll go home and unpack said suitcase. I will then proceed to plug in my phone,” Hux tells him. “My phone will thus no longer be dead and I will be able to give you my number. At home.”

“At home,” Ben repeats carefully. “Ah.”

“If you’d like, you could _accompany_ me home,” Hux says, nonchalant. “To make sure my phone gets plugged in correctly, and whatnot. I could also,” he adds casually, “offer my services as a tour guide, and take you to one of my favourite London restaurants.” He catches Ben’s eye and smiles. “Great place for a date.”

“Is it really?” Ben asks, an answering smile playing on his lips. “Well. Seeing as how I’ll be living in London for the foreseeable future, that would certainly be some valuable knowledge to have. It would be pretty ridiculous of me to pass up an offer like that.”

“Absolutely asinine,” Hux agrees.

“In that case, I suppose I’ll just have to take you up on it.”

“A very wise choice indeed.”

Ben grins broadly. He spies another of his bags on the carousel and grabs it, pumping his fist in triumph: “Last one!”

Hux raises his eyebrows: “Shall we find a cab, then?”

“Lead the way.”

*

 

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, these characters (except for Katherine) aren't mine; neither is the very brief excerpt from _The Pillars of the Earth_ by Ken Follett, which, you'll have noticed, I (like Hux) am a little salty about. (Sorry, Ken).
> 
> Feel free to come say hi on my [main blog](http://abernathae.tumblr.com) or my [Star Wars blog](http://huxes.tumblr.com)!


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